There is an automated battery driven version of the Brooks Brothers Bread Spreader on the market now, under the label of The Brookstone Breader. It has a chip i it that smells decaying bread and deploys a titanium spatula to scoop it up, and stuff it into an odor-proof plastic baggie--all mounted on a 24-volt RC chassis so you can sit on your duff steering it around from clump to clump. Take up a collection--it's only $2734 US -- and your bread-spread problems will be over.

Yesterday, I flew to 19 Lewis Avenue, Trenton, Ontario. It's not there. But the tree I used to walk my snakes in is. It's a bit bigger now as it is 47 years since I last saw it.

I recall one particular snake. It was a monster of a "Garter Snake". I was walking him in the tree when Mrs. Coles from the house on the other side of the ditch (still there as can be seen by the ground cover) came by with her yappy little dog and asked me what I was doing. I suppose it did look rather odd. A little boy holding a string that reached up into a tree. I replied that I was walking Smilie the 9th. She came close to have a look but couldn't see him. I pointed and she got closer but still couldn't see him so I tugged on the string. That's when she relized what she was suppose to be looking for. That poor dog. I mean, the shriek hurt my ears so he must have gotten more than an earful, not to mention the fact that she ran so fast she drug his yappy little ass half way home.

Smilie the 9th met an unfortunate end. I tethered him to the oil fill pipe next to the door steps so he could take sun or shade as he wished. Under the steps, I placed a water dish and a bucket of frogs and beetles and whatever a 6 year old thought would appease the palette of a snake of Nine's stature. Yes, stature. Even the big kids from as far away as across the field, when hearing of his size, would come to see him. I like to think he enjoyed all the attention. Alas, I recall the fateful day when my father first saw him. I was coming across the field at lunchtime and saw Dad just about to enter the house. He spotted Nine basking in the sunshine whereupon he dismounted from the landing using the railing and made a perfect plant. He saw the string. He raised it up. I screamed and cried. At least Nine died quickly.

I was subsequently forbidden to keep snakes near the house as, "They might scare your mother." He didn't have to say that as I was scared for the snakes and kept the next 17 well out of sight, especially Smilie the 21st. He was a Hog Nose Snake about four feet long. Only kept him a few days. When a bunch of kids would come to see him, he would play dead and he smelled really bad. But, he was cool. Looked like a cobra. When he refused to eat, I took him back to the dump. I guess he preferred rats to frogs.

Join the revolet at www.savethefurrylittlecritters.com. Sign the petitition and, please, donate. Send cash only by snailmail to "Voles Matter", 55 Leeside Drive, Moncton, NB, Canada E1C 4L4. I'll personally see that every dollar is well used.

Say, any of youse like blues-rock (IF I can use that term???)? I found a YT vid of the late Canuck Bluesman/rock geetarman Jeff Healy today. The vid is "vintage" in a way and was an intro of sorts to Canucks (and Yanks) of Jeff's laudable talents.

Being attacked by lost, feral golfs can be an unsettling experience indeed. You'll notice, for example, that there are no more voles on that fairway, where once their colonies multiplied like fleas. What happened to the voles? In a word, golfs. Once the turfers and drivers and putters and cart drivers moved in, the vole's days were numbered. The multiplication of feral golfs just served as the coup de graceless. Voles and golfs do not mix, as the old saying goes. The greensward stretches out its lethal manicured turfs in a brilliant, vole-less and soulless display of nature's self-inflicted cruelty. And who mourns the vole? No vole-song is heard in the land. A grim, shadowy silence -- a vole vacuum -- is all that is heard. No more will the patter of little vole feet be heard on the prairie. The rhythmic sound of their byways has been replaced by the grim dimpled rattle of the rolling golfs and the chatter of their dribbling into cups hither and yon. Few remain who remember the quiet rhythms of the night when the vole was king, before the coming of the golfs. Fewer still care, and none sing now the ancient vole-hymn under the indifferent moon.

Outside my backyard is a golf course. When we moved here I was all set, but my wife told me I couldn't shoot golf even if I only used a 20 gauge. Well, what she said was, "You shoot it, you eat it" and them golfs are all hard on the outside, tough to peel, stringy and stretchy on the inside, and taste like rubber. So I didn't and now the population has gone out of control and there ain't enough natural feed and sometimes a dog or a kid won't come home after a stroll on the golf course. They ain't attacked an adult yet, but I expect some of the older folks better start worrying, what with winter coming on.

Dang, and here's me thinkin' you boys were carryin' heat 24/7 on the look out for bad guys. Guess I'm gonna hafta go the officous route and contact someone with a clipboard or a uniform. Mind you, the guy next door's a golfer so mebbe I can borrow me an iron an' see if it's possible to knock some sense into the PHANTOM BREADSPREADER.

Either that or I can make sure his shirt's bin properly pressed so he looks smart for the sheriff's men an' the judge.

See, I didn't hang mah guns up. I keep handy and ready to go, with a trigger lock on each and all of 'em locked up in a gun cabinet with the ammo kept apart elsewhere. So's iffen I gotta use one er more of 'em, I gotta go git the key to the gun cabinet (it's all metal), unlock the door, take out the needed shootin' ahrn, go git the key to the trigger lock, unlock it, then go git the ammunition and load up. Then I gotta put all them keys and things away an' by that time things have usually settled down from the gunfightin' stage to the let's-go-git-a-beer stage. An' that's why I ain't hung mah guns up.

Pete... hung up me guns ages ago. Besides, I don't shoot me no rounders what stole away my duck. (Don't bother to try to look up any lyric references to that on accounta that was on a bootleg album of a concert by Lynard Skynard... sans la canard, of course.)

Hmmmm... speakin a Lynard... I don't carry me no load. (Rap is sure to get that ref.)

Breadspreading is a particular problem with its own specialized requirements. One should use an elongate club with a spatulate head, preferably aluminium (The Walmart BreadSpreader) or titanium (The Brooks Borthers Bread Spreader). For those unable to afford the luxury of a manufactured product, we recommend a broomstick, a flexible spatula, and a roll of duct tape (The Duct Bread Spreader).

Seems someone coming along behind to kick the bread into the water is in order. Or perhaps someone armed with a golf club, would it be a wood or an iron that you would use to lift and propel something so lightweight?

Hey, gnu, you're needed over here in lil'ol' England, Penkridge in Staffordshire to be precisional.

Yep, we got oursells a PHANTOM BREAD SPREADER!

Walks along the canal early every morning from Otherton Lock to Princefield Bridge spreading loadsa bread - about two slices every few steps. For the ducks apparently, but the shithead don't realise that the ducks are smart enough not to eat anything that ain't in the water so the bread lies there goin' mouldy and attractin' rats and gettin' ate by dogs (canal's a fave place for doggie walkin'). Trouble is, pooches ain't born to eat bread an' causes them all sortsa problems - ours has seborrhoea, another has diarrhoea - an' they're right miserable cos of it an' them vets ain't cheap.

"You've heard of the witch hunts in Salem, but I'm guessing you're not as familiar with the pig-man hunts of New Haven. The most troubling sex fiends of those days weren't pedophiles (the age of consent in the colonies was ten, if that tells you anything) but men secretly in league with the Devil to impregnate barnyard animals. The fear was that the resulting malevolent offspring (called 'prodigies' -- my, how the meaning of that word has changed over time) would silently infiltrate the fledgling America and muck it all up with evil for the God-fearing folk. The settlers had gotten this strange idea from the teachings of the violently prudish medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas, who coined the term 'prodigy' to refer to any hybrid creature sprung from the loins of another species but borne of human seed. According to him, prodigies could also be conceived through sex with atheists, but it seems there were far fewer of those milling about the colonies than solicitous swine."

BTW... here is a pic of my two shots (why waste shells?) at 100m with the top barrel (full choke 12) of my 28" vent rib o/u Baikal made by Izhevsky Mechanichesky Zavod. My baby has a cracked stock and a worn bead sight (both long stories and one involves a harrowing incident traversing a beaver dam on a 3-wheeler). 1 ounce rifled Winchester slugs.

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Not bad, eh?

Took over 2000 ruffed grouse with that gun over about 25 years. Over 600 after I taped up the crack in the stock with duct tape. I was gonna leave it to cousin Jim with the will video sayin somethin like "Since you can't hunt or shoot worth shit, this might help." but I think I'll leave it to cousin Charley on accounta he learned what I taught him because he was not an arrogant little snot.

BTW... that there Russian gun? It beat the shit out of a Browning that would cost you around $40,000 today and a world champion skeet shooter (I was there). I paid $300, cash, no tax.

No, I never thought that. I thought it was a mean ol' troll who lived under the bridge and was now starting to infect MOAB the Pure and that I'd have to get the Idaho Legion to unlimber its limbered Ribauldequin and remove the infenestration.

MOM, I cleared space for the onion seed and garlic buds that were on the cloves I dug earlier this year. You're going to have to stop pulling the car off of the concrete driveway now so you don't smash the garden.

HEY MOM!!! I went cowboy shooting and my shooting for the first scenario was FLAWLESS!!!! No misses!!! Not one!!! Not even a near miss!!!! 24 shots (10 pistol, 10 rifle, 4 shotgun) and 24 hits!!!! And in 93.4 seconds, which included moving from one place to another!!!

Of course when I finished I had to be reminded to take the guns to unloading table to be cleared....

Rap, your sense of humour is indeed warped. I like that. Stan's voice and spirit grace my house every so often. Must put one of his CDs in the truck as I love to sing along whilst not paying attention to the road. I am thinking of dumping the truck and just using Mum's car as the truck is a rather expensive toy when the only, at present, real justification for such a beast is being able to plow through a snowstorm in an emergency but THAT would require me to drive more carefully. Donchya hate runalong sentences?

SRS, if it is my Air Canada comments that confuse, I conclude you have never flown the unfriendly skies of Air Canada, whose reputation for obnoxious flight crews is quite common knowledge the world over.

I do that all the time but I always thought is was called Budification. Urp.

BTW, A, your empty pack of Camels adorns my mantle next to mementos of past gracers of my humble abode. I even stuffed one of those four drag stubs in the lip of it to attest to my skills as a host. One may search one's mind all eve for the meaning of that but never find a suitable answer unless they spend an eve in the presence of such momentos.

Odd that I cling to the memories of that eve so. Or, perhaps, not so odd. I guess ya had ta be there to unnerstand why it was "special" for me. I hope for another next weelend. A Canuck of HIGH note, known and acclaimed far and wide, surely heard by youse on popular media, will be in da house barring unforeseen circumsandwiches like what happened last time he was supposed ta show up. Twas not his fault but that of the dreaded Air Canada. "Excuse me, sir. How may I help you enjoy your Air Canada flight today?" "I am on Air Canada? Ohhhhh fuuuuuck. Wait, did you ask me how you could HELP?" "Just shittin! HAHAHAHAA! Sit down, put yer fuckin tray up yer ass and shut the fuck up. Yer lucky we let you on the plane."

You got no call for all that bletherskiting around. I have had PLENTY of thoughts on all those things. But unlike your Noble Self, I am only operating one body, this lifetime, and am constrained by time therefore. Furthermore, I --unlike you--am not blessed with Unlimited REsources.

You got no call for all that bletherskiting around. I have had PLENTY of thoughts on all those things. But unlike your Noble Self, I am only operating one body, this lifetime, and am constrained by time therefore. Furthermore, I --unlike you--am not blessed with Unlimited REsources.

Poor wife. Poor doggy. And never a thought to visiting elsewhere than the far East. Visit Amergin? Visit Deckman or Don Firth? Visit me or Eiseley? Noooooooooooooooooooo. Well, I hope your doggy mictruates on the leg of your pants for she remembers who you are if you leave in the future.